Although the Internet has had great successes in facilitating communications between computer systems and enabling electronic commerce, the computer systems connected to the Internet have been under almost constant attack by hackers seeking to disrupt their operation. Many of the attacks seek to exploit vulnerabilities of the application programs, operating systems, and other computer programs executing on those computer systems. One of the most destructive methods of attacking a computer system has been to infect the computer system with software that is designed specifically to damage or disrupt the computer system. Such software is referred to as “malware” because of its malicious nature. When malware invades a computer system, the integrity of the computer system is greatly compromised. Malware includes computer worms, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, and so forth. Some malware behave nefariously, such as by illicitly collecting and transmitting personal information. Some malware can hijack resources needed by operating system components or use these resources to subvert the security of the operating system. For example, such malware can cause an unprotected network resource to open a TCP/IP port that allows a third party to access the operating system's resources.
Conventional techniques of detecting and disabling malware include installing anti-malware software and hardware products, such as antiviral software, spyware detection software, firewalls, and so forth. It is not uncommon for numerous anti-malware products to be installed and executing on a computer system. Each of the numerous anti-malware products that are executing on a computer system each generates its own report on the state of the health of the computer system. For example, an anti-virus product will generate a report regarding the presence of a virus, an anti-spyware product will generate a separate report regarding the presence of spyware, and an anti-phishing product will generate still a separate report regarding the exposure to a phishing attack. Unfortunately, the computer system user may easily become overwhelmed with the number of reports provided by the various anti-malware products that are executing. Moreover, the user may find it difficult to digest the information contained in the various reports to determine the actual health of the computer system.